


How Can I Meet You?

by pennypaperbrain



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Humiliation, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock Roulette, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Masochism, Sexual Frustration, Sexual Incompatibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 16:49:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennypaperbrain/pseuds/pennypaperbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is a sub who wants an awful lot more than John is willing to give him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Can I Meet You?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rachelsmindpalace](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rachelsmindpalace).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Как нам встретиться?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2537693) by [souzern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/souzern/pseuds/souzern)



> **Written for this prompt:**  
>  Pairing: Johnlock. Sherlock is a submissive who wants to explore the more dangerous and unknown aspects of BDSM--everything from flogging and temperature to humblers and full-time powerplay. John has been okay with the more vanilla aspects of BDSM (ie. blindfolds, furry handcuffs), but he's unwilling to try anything that might put Sherlock in danger. He's especially reluctant to Dom for Sherlock because, in addition to be a doctor (hurting someone goes against his morals), he's afraid he'll have some complications with his PTSD (war flashbacks, a recurrence of his limp). How can Sherlock get what he needs to feel fulfilled (both in the bedroom and in their daily interactions) without pushing John past his limits?
> 
> I've stuck fairly closely to the prompt except that I couldn't quite see Sherlock pushing for fulltime powerplay. So we have a masochistic Sherlock with a John who wants to cherish and nurture.

Furry handcuffs, a velvet flogger, even a ridiculous stick with feathers on the end… they’ve tried everything. Everything that is, providing it’s gentle, providing it’s safe, and providing it’s within John’s limits. The result is Sherlock lying on his back trying to pretend he can’t pick the lock on these cuffs, and that he can’t see the top of the wardrobe and the ceiling light around the edge of his airline sleep mask blindfold, and that these token gimmicks are anything like enough for him when his mind is full of whips and pain and John grabbing him by the hair and shoving him to his knees, choking him and forcing him to suck cock and then crawl away with his own erection dripping and unattended until John requires his arse. God yes, yes.

Sherlock moans.

‘Sherlock? Does this hurt?’ It’s John’s voice. Cautious.

Sherlock swims back to reality. His inner thighs are being dusted by the limp velvet thing. He can, if he concentrates, register the sensation. That’s about it.

‘No, John, it does not.’

Hell. He shouldn’t have spoken in that tone. Too late though. He hears the soft _tump_ of the velvet thing being dumped on the carpet. Then the heavier _whump_ and creak of John sitting down beside him. The blindfold is lifted away from Sherlock’s face.

‘I can’t do this,’ John says.

‘You don’t want to,’ Sherlock replies.

John silently undoes the cuffs.

***

They avoid talking about it until the following night. John’s had a couple of drinks, in the pointed way he does when he wants to say something, and Sherlock’s waiting for him to say it, in the way he does when he knows what John’s trying to do and isn’t inclined to make it easy.

‘Sorry,’ John says.

‘What for?’ inquires Sherlock, languidly turning the page of a forensics textbook. He looks at John out of the corner of his eye.

‘Not being what you want,’ John says. His face is turning red. Sherlock relents. 

‘If you grip that glass any tighter, John, you’ll need stitches,’ he says, putting down his book. Then: ‘Do you worry that I might leave you?’

‘I don’t know,’ John almost whispers, looking down. He’s obviously ashamed of falling short, ashamed of what he wants and of what he doesn’t, and the whole package makes Sherlock angry because it’s so unnecessary. This is not the real man. Sherlock wants confident John, powerful John, the one he fell in love with. Even if that John will only refuse to do what’s asked.

So Sherlock needles him.

‘Oh _dear_. If you have this much difficulty it’s a wonder we got as far as kissing. But then I started that, if I remember rightly. If I hadn’t, we’d still be all “I’m not gay!”, wouldn’t we?’

John’s head jerks up. He’s turning pale with anger. Sherlock is gratified. And unnerved.

‘So yes, I accepted I’m bisexual,’ John retorts. ‘I’m _not_ gay. There’s been you and one other bloke my entire life. I got my head around all that, and I got my head around the idea of tying you up... but hurting people for pleasure is not who I am. I do get a kick out of you listening to me for once, but the things you want to “work up to”... I can’t go there.’

‘Why not?’ Sherlock demands, sitting forward in his chair. He knows he’s pushing this, but if only John could see how much he needs pain – the control and the challenge...

John sits back. Sherlock feels as if there is a thread between them, and it’s being strained, although it hasn’t yet broken.

‘Because I think of prison cells, Sherlock. I think of the things we found in isolated villages. I even think of sewing up flesh wounds on my A&E rotation. Screams are not sexy to me. I have nightmares. I have post-traumatic stress – do you understand?’

Sherlock listens in silence. John is shaking slightly with the effort of honesty and a small part of Sherlock wants to honour that, wants to tell him it’s OK, this isn’t important... but a much larger part of him is mortified. Always, sooner or later, it comes down to this: _freak_. 

He leans back in his own chair, crosses his legs and steeples his fingers against his lips.

‘Yes, I understand very well, John,’ he says quietly. ‘You are telling me that you have no difficulties reconciling your job killing people with your job curing them, and yet you place my sexuality on a par with Abu Ghraib.’

Sherlock means that to hurt and enrage. He means it to send John storming out of the room, inarticulate and shamed.

The fact that it doesn’t reminds him why he is in love.

‘Oh, don’t be an overdramatic arsehole,’ John replies, and scowls. ‘I want to be your dom, Sherlock... I just don’t know if I can. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop trying.’

***

They do keep trying. John discovers that he’s OK doing waxplay as long as he rigorously tests the candles beforehand and holds them up high enough. Sherlock buys a gag and fits it on himself so John can see how absolutely safe it is, and finds that when blindfold and gag and earplugs are all added together the resulting sensory deprivation enhances the ability of even mild pain to hold his attention. John has a happy half hour doing all the gentle thigh-scratching he wants.

On the other hand, John’s experiments at hitting his own calf with the riding crop just lead to him saying ‘Fuck, Sherlock, _no_ ,’ and going out for a drink, And when Sherlock buys some hardcore Pakistani-manufacture military restraints in order to demonstrate that, if viewed in a domestic context, such objects can be rendered unthreatening, he nearly gets non-consensually punched for his trouble. John has to go upstairs to calm down.

They are getting closer to each other. This doesn’t mean they merge.

***

It comes to a head one night when Sherlock is just lying there while John fiddles uncertainly with some crap clamps. And Sherlock really is just lying there, and John really is uncertain. They both know it.

‘Oh God,’ grumbles Sherlock, sitting up so that the clamps ping off. ‘There is no point in this if it isn’t what you want, John!’ And he means to come across as arch and cutting, but he doesn’t. He hears himself sound miserable.

‘What _I_ want?’ John snaps back. ‘How can it be about that that? I’m just not a sadist. Maybe we should stop, so you can find someone you’d think less pathetic.’

‘You know perfectly well you’re not pathetic. Cheap distraction tactic. _Tell_ me.’

John sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. It’s similar to what happened the first night they argued about this, and Sherlock wonders if all they’ve done is to come back around to that moment. Maybe John will stay silent again. And maybe all this, whatever it is, really will be over.

The thought is excessively unpleasant.

‘What I want is...’ starts John quietly, staring at his hands. ‘What I want... OK. My way into this BDSM stuff is wanting to look after you. Maybe control you a bit, yes. But with love, not pain. You can scoff at that if you like, but you’ve known what kind of man I am since you met me, and if you really held that in contempt we wouldn’t be here.’

John looks up and over his shoulder, to meet Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock stares back, and then puts his arm around John’s neck from behind.

‘Try,’ he says. ‘Give me orders, and I’ll obey them.’

John laughs, without much humour. ‘You’re just saying that. You could try for a day or two but it’d be unnatural. You like to be hurt and forced.’

Sherlock thinks. All that John’s said is true, and yet it has uneven edges. Places where they might interlock after all.

‘There’s such a thing as moral force, John, and you have it. What if you forced me to _want_ what you want, not in everything, but in key areas that are important to you?’

John detaches himself from Sherlock’s embrace and turns around, raising one knee onto the bed so they can properly face each other. He studies Sherlock intently, as if searching for a catch.

‘What if the idea of that excites me?’ Sherlock says... because yes, it does.

John licks his lips, half-aroused, half-considering.

‘Then we would have things left to try,’ he says.

***

The next time they have sex, John instructs Sherlock how to position himself, but it’s hardly thrilling. He occupies himself by deducing some previous tenants’ sex life from the dents in the wall above the headboard. 

Part-way through the process, John sits back on the folded duvet. Sherlock is waiting for another instruction, but John just watches him. It makes him feel more exposed than normal nakedness does.

‘Crawl around the room, from the wardrobe to the dresser,’ says John.

The question _Why?_ rises to Sherlock’s lips, but he stills it. The reason is, of course, because John says so. He did want to try this. So he slides off the bed, gets onto his hands and knees and does as he’s been instructed, his half-hard cock bobbing beneath him as he goes. He can feel John’s eyes following him.

It is strangely compelling. When he’s finished the circuit he doesn’t jump back up onto the bed but waits in position, and looks up at John.

John’s eyes are alight with a hesitant but unmistakable pleasure. _You actually did that because I told you_ , he as good as says. Then he fucks Sherlock’s mouth, and isn’t careful about it.

They’ve found something. It’s not all that Sherlock wanted, but it’s a start.

***

Some things gel. Sherlock learns to take an interest in washing up and cleaning the kitchen, motivated at first by working naked with a vibrator up his arse and then simply by working naked with John watching him. John learns basic shibari, so sometimes when Sherlock goes out now he’s wearing a rope harness underneath his clothes, as a reminder of what’s between them. They discover that Sherlock the ever-theatrical likes to beg, and that drives them both wild as Sherlock pleads ever more desperately to be allowed to come but John just brings himself off using Sherlock’s arse or face then forbids him to touch himself until morning.

Other things don’t work. Sherlock does get bored of following orders, and brats, and while John is less reticent about being a little rough with him now he still refuses point blank to strike him. Eventually there’s a shouting match of the ‘Fucking hit me!’ ‘No!’ variety.

It ends surprisingly, when John takes Sherlock by the hair and twists it so Sherlock goes to his knees and... _oh yes._

‘So hair-pulling’s... not inflicting pain in your... world, is it?’ inquires Sherlock, speaking unevenly because it so gloriously is painful.

‘It doesn’t land anyone in casualty,’ says John. ‘I never saw a man killed by it.’ And he drags a crawling Sherlock across the floor by his hair, saying: ‘You love this, don’t you? Being treated like a slave. You’ll learn to love what I love, all right.’

And yes, Sherlock loves this. It only lasts for a few moments before John ramps down to kissing him on the sofa, but Sherlock remains on fire. The adaptation process apparently works both ways.

It never goes as far as he would wish, but there are moments now when they can touch minds as well as bodies. Sherlock slows down, John speeds up, and somehow, in passing, they meet.


End file.
